Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso Instituto de Literatura y Ciencias del Lenguaje Facultad de Filosofía y Educación Pedagogía en Inglés

Using the contextual redefinition strategy to improve students’ ability of guessing the meaning of unknown words. Araceli Arias Profesor guía: Dr. Millaray Salas Primer Semestre 2017 1

Table of contents Contextualization report ................................................................................................................... 4 The institution ............................................................................................................................... 4 Description of the class................................................................................................................. 7 Statement of the problem .............................................................................................................. 8 Data collection .............................................................................................................................. 9 The intervention .......................................................................................................................... 11 SWOT analysis ........................................................................................................................... 11 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 13 References .................................................................................................................................. 14 Appendix A: Lista de precios libros en inglés ............................................................................ 16 Appendix B: Interview transcription .......................................................................................... 17 Appendix C: Students’ distribution in school houses ................................................................. 24 Appendix D: Survey results ........................................................................................................ 25 Appendix E: Vocabulary size test scores ................................................................................... 30 Action Plan ..................................................................................................................................... 31 The problem ................................................................................................................................ 31 Literature review......................................................................................................................... 32 The intervention .......................................................................................................................... 34 The assessment ........................................................................................................................... 35 References .................................................................................................................................. 37 Reflection of the pedagogical intervention .................................................................................... 38 Modifications to the action plan ................................................................................................. 38 Results ........................................................................................................................................ 39 The pre and post-test................................................................................................................... 40 The survey .................................................................................................................................. 41 The word sorts ............................................................................................................................ 42 Discussion ................................................................................................................................... 43 Reflection.................................................................................................................................... 44 References .................................................................................................................................. 46 Appendix A: Pre and post-test results ........................................................................................ 48 2

Appendix B: Survey results ........................................................................................................ 50 Appendix C: Word sorts ............................................................................................................. 54

3

Contextualization report The purpose of this report is to present a description and analysis of the context in which I will be doing my final practicum and my action research project. I will begin by describing some key aspects of the institution, then I will proceed to describe the students, and then the way in which the English subject is addressed in the school. After that, I will describe the groups I am in charge of more specifically and then I will proceed to present the data collected through different instruments and reflect on its implications. Finally, I will refer to my tentative intervention plan and I will analyse its feasibility through a SWOT analysis.

The institution The Happy school1 has been working under that name since the year 2001; nonetheless, the institution, which initially depended on the Sociedad Educacional San Nicolás, was founded in 1976 by the educator Elena Montino Johnson.. The school is semi-private and the monthly fee is around $80.000. However, according to the school file in the Ministry of Education’s website, it has 530 scholarships available (MIME. Ministerio de Educación, n.d.). In the same file provided by the Ministry, we can see that the school does not have a Convenio de subvención escolar preferencial, so it does not receive additional resources for priority students.

1

The school’s name has been changed for anonymity purposes.

4

With all this information, we can infer that most of the students’ families come from a medium to high socioeconomic status. In their webpage, they point out that their teaching philosophy is based on a principle of differentiation of the learning process, which responds to the idea that not everybody learns at the same pace. For that reason, the school offers a system of academic levels (beginner, intermediate, and advanced) in subjects like Science, Mathematics, Spanish language, and English. The school’s webpage also offers plenty of information regarding the institution’s mission and objectives, and one of the most highlighted aspects is academic excellence. Consequently, the students are expected to be responsible and to develop their abilities in different areas, like sports, technology, English, arts, etc. Also, according to my own observations and to the school’s rules, there is a strong emphasis on personal appearance. The students are expected to wear their uniform impeccably and their hair neat, and to regulate this, the school does periodic revisions of personal appearance that all the students must attend. Another important piece of information is that the teachers working in the school in 2017 are around 100 and the total number of students is around 2000 (MIME. Ministerio de Educación, n.d.). Due to the large number of students, primary and secondary education have separate buildings for most of their activities. Besides, the school organises the students in different Houses (Bristol, Oxford, Lancaster, York and London). According to the information provided by the Chilean Ministry of Education, the average number of students per classroom in the Happy school is 32 (MIME. Ministerio de Educación, n.d.). The size of the classrooms is relatively small for the number of students, especially considering that the

5

tables they use occupy a lot of space. However, the whiteboard is placed on one of the largest walls so there can be many students sitting at the front and the rows do not have more than five students. As it has been mentioned before, the emphasis that the school puts in the teaching-learning of English is remarkable. Yet, high-schoolers have only 4 hours of English a week, not very different from the national average. The English department does not use the books provided by the ministry so the parents are in charge of buying the coursebooks (published by Oxford University Press), which can be relatively expensive, with prices ranging from $21.900-$37.100 (details about the prices can be found in Appendix A: Coursebooks prices); this can make it difficult for teachers to use activities that are not in the book for their lessons because there is a pressure from the school and the parents to use the coursebook as the core of the lessons. As mentioned in the description of the institution, the students are divided into 3 levels with a placement test designed by the school. Nevertheless, the knowledge of the English language that the students possess is not the only factor to determine their level. In an interview designed by the team of pre-service teachers in the school (see Appendix B: Interview transcription), the head of the English department points out that the level in which the students are placed depends both on their aptitude and their attitude, so it is possible to find quite proficient students in the first levels due to a lack of commitment with the subject. Since one of the objectives mentioned is related to technology, it is worth mentioning that every classroom that is used for English lessons has a projector and speakers.The teachers are also provided with a virtual version of the coursebook that contains audios for the listening activities, access to the student’s book, the workbook, and the teacher’s book.

6

Finally, the English department has a calendar of tests and quizzes that the teachers must follow, so for instance, all 10th graders will have quiz number 1 the same day, at the same time.

Description of the class There are two classes that I am in charge of. The first class is the advanced group of the 8th graders, and on second is one of the beginner groups of 10th graders. However, because there is much more room for improvement, I have decided to do my Action Research project with the 10th grade class. This class consists of 34 students (20 male and 14 female) mostly from the house York B (see Appendix C: Students’ distribution in School Houses), who are very talkative but quite diverse in terms of willingness to participate. Some of the students are so eager to demonstrate their knowledge that sometimes they make it difficult for their classmates to answer to questions or show their work. Some other students insist that they do not know English or that they understand it but cannot speak it, so they are more reluctant to do the activities. In terms of interpersonal relationships, the students at first seem to get along well with one another. This can become a problem when considering the size of the classroom. Students being so close to one another makes it easier for them to talk about non-subject-related topics. However, something I observed when I started teaching and organising the class in different groups, was that some students are mostly friendly towards those who belong to the same houses as them. More concretely, when I tried to make students from the house York work with students from the house York B they simply refused to work together. In the interview with the head of the English department, she pointed out that beginner students have difficulties with the language in general, but especially with productive skills. She also said

7

that when it comes to receptive skills, reading is less difficult for them than listening. I was able to observe those characteristics in the 10th graders I am teaching when I wanted to introduce a simple speaking activity and I found them reluctant to participate; also, when I asked them to produce a short piece of text and I saw them struggling to find the words. It is likely that those characteristics have made teachers decide that the typical English lesson should be very grammar and reading centred. The English teacher must structure his/her lesson according to the coursebook, in which each unit is oriented towards a grammatical point. For that reason, the typical lesson includes several grammar drills, and every reading or listening activity contains the grammatical structure being studied. Their classroom is equipped with a projector, speakers, and bilingual dictionaries, so there are opportunities for the teacher to present input in different ways. This class works with the coursebook Got it! Level 2B by Oxford, which contains both the student’s book, and the workbook. The English department has decided that during the term, 10th graders should go over units 5 and 6, which have a strong grammar focus on the present perfect tense.

Statement of the problem During the observation week, I could witness how students were constantly asking for translations or explanations of words, which naturally interfered with the activities. Moreover, in spite of there being plenty of dictionaries available in the classrooms, the students were still having difficulties related to vocabulary knowledge. Several authors have tried to define vocabulary knowledge from different approaches. Milton and Fitzpatrick (2013) refer to component, developmental, and metaphorical approaches to word 8

knowledge. However, I will be referring mostly to component approaches which can be related, up to a certain point, to developmental approaches. Nation (2001) (as cited in Milton and Fitzpatrick, 2013) proposes three main headings to categorise vocabulary knowledge; those are knowledge of form, knowledge of meaning and knowledge of use. Anderson and Freebody (1982) (as cited in Milton and Fitzpatrick, 2013), on the other hand, proposed a distinction between breadth and depth of word knowledge, where breadth refers to the number of words a language user knows, and depth to the knowledge the user has of those words. According to Milton and Fitzpatrick (2013), the model proposed by Paribakht and Wesche (1993), "implies that Nation's 2001 table is almost a developmental sequence as well as a component list: knowledge of form precedes knowledge of meaning, which precedes knowledge of use." In spite of the distinction between breadth and depth, Meara (1997) (as cited in Milton and Fitzpatrick, 2013) points out that in depth implies breadth, which makes the lack of vocabulary my students present even more worrisome. In other words, if the students only know a few words (breadth), the links they can establish between them and the knowledge they have about them (depth) are likely to be poor.

Data collection After the identification of a possible aspect to improve, a survey was conducted to gather information about the students’ actions in relation to vocabulary learning (see Appendix D: Survey results). Some of the most interesting results of this survey are related to question 1 in the survey (“What do you do when you encounter an unknown word in a written text in English?”). Most of the

9

responses (54,55%) were “I try to understand it through the context.” This seems to be one of the best strategies but what happens with learners whose vocabulary knowledge does not allow them to understand the words surrounding the target lexical item? Kersten (2010) suggests that since beginners have a much more “limited knowledge of the L2, the teacher needs to provide them with additional cues” (p.76). Similarly, Schmitt (2000) points out, in relation to explicit teaching and incidental learning, that “with rank beginners, it is probably necessary to explicitly teach all words until students have enough vocabulary to start making use of the unknown words they meet in context" (p.145). Moreover, Wilfong (2013) suggests to “help students learn to use strategies to figure out the meanings of unknown words independently; Don't prompt students to use only context clues.” In other words, context can be a very rich resource for understanding unknown words, but students could benefit more from explicit instruction of strategies to use contextual clues. Another instrument used to collect data about vocabulary, was Nation’s test to measure receptive vocabulary size (Nation and Beglar, 2007). The test contains 140 multiple-choice questions in which each item tested represents a word family. “The test uses frequency levels based on the British National Corpus word family lists for the sampling.” The whole class sat the test and the score average was 34 (see Appendix E: Vocabulary Size Test Scores), which means that the students know around 3400 word families. In the test specifications provided by Nation in his webpage, he provides a table to illustrate the “vocabulary sizes needed to get 98% coverage (including proper nouns) of various kinds of texts” (Nation, 2006). The table shows, for example, that in order to understand children’s films, 6000 word families are needed. With that information in mind, we can say that the 10th graders I am teaching only have about half of the vocabulary needed to understand a simple genre like children’s movies. 10

The intervention Considering the fact that the period devoted to the intervention will not be more than a month, teaching words does not seem to be an optimal alternative. For that reason, I have decided to concentrate on teaching strategies to learn vocabulary. Regarding strategies, Weinstein and Mayer (1986) (as cited in Takač, 2008) “The role of learning strategies in the process of cognitive learning is to make explicit what otherwise may occur without learners' awareness or may occur inefficiently, and thus may result in incomplete storage of information in the long-term memory.” For that reason, I think teaching strategies may be more valuable that simply teaching words. Brassell (2010) proposes several strategies to approach unknown words, but one of the most interesting ones for this particular group of students could be Contextual Redefinition because it deals with something similar to what they already do. This strategy aims at training students in the use of contextual clues to figure out the meaning of new words “through the use of structural analyses such as using prefixes, suffixes, and root words to associate with other meaningful word parts" (Brassell, 2010).

SWOT analysis Strengths: The main strength for the implementation of this intervention is that the students are familiar, to a certain extent, with the use of the context to understand the meaning of an unknown word. This is really valuable because it should be easier and more meaningful to teach them something using their prior knowledge as foundation. 11

Weaknesses: Some weakness I can perceive are the fact that the interaction among students is relatively unpredictable since, as mentioned before, the students belong to different houses and not all of them get along well. A way to solve this could be allowing them to decide who to work with. Another weakness is related to attitudinal factors like some student’s reluctance to participate and the fact that they are so talkative. In that sense, it may be difficult to keep them concentrated in the lessons but if the activities are engaging, simple, and short, the negative impact of these attitudinal factors can be minimised. Opportunities: A great opportunity is my mentor teacher’s supportive attitude towards my Action Research project and his knowledge of the topic. According to what he told me, he has also worked with Nation’s test to determine vocabulary size and he thinks the focus of my project is appropriate for the group, so he could be a great support during the intervention. Threats: Some threats to the intervention would be the fact that I have to cover the contents of the book in a predetermined period in order to respect the test dates. That means that the time I can devote to the implementation of this intervention is quite limited, but with careful planning, it is certainly possible. Also, the school has revisions of personal appearance that sometimes interfere with the lessons without prior notice to the teacher. Perhaps I will have to deal with lesson cancellation, so it will be necessary to have a plan B to most lessons.

12

Conclusion Vocabulary knowledge is part of the foundations of language learning, and a deficiency in this area can considerably hinder an efficient learning process. For that reason, the class I am teaching could be benefited from the use of strategies to approach unknown words in a written text. Finally, there are several opportunities that the school provides for teachers to innovate--like the use of technology--so the lessons can be presented in many different ways to ensure the effectiveness of the intervention. However, the threats identified will require constant attention to diminish their potentially negative impact.

13

References Brassell, D. (2010). Dare to Differentiate: Vocabulary Strategies for All Students. New York: Guilford Press Kersten, S. (2010). The mental lexicon and vocabulary learning: Implications for the foreign language classroom. Tübingen: Narr. Milton, J. (2013). Measuring the contribution of vocabulary knowledge to proficiency in the four skills. In C. Bardel, C. Lindqvist, & B. Laufer (Eds.), L2 vocabulary acquisition, knowledge and use: New perspectives on assessment and corpus analysis (pp. 57-78) (Eurosla Monographs Series, 2). European Second Language Association. Milton, J. and Fitzpatrick, T. (2013). Dimensions of Vocabulary Knowledge. Palgrave Macmillan. Nation, I.S.P. and Beglar, D. (2007) A vocabulary size test. The Language Teacher, 31(7), 9-13. Nation,

P.

(2012).

The

Vocabulary

Size

Test.

Retrieved

from:

http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/about/staff/publications/paul-nation/Vocabulary-Size-Testinformation-and-specifications.pdf Nation, I. S. P., (2006). How large a vocabulary is needed for reading and listening?. Canadian Modern Language Review, 63(1), 59-82. Read, J. (2000). Assessing Vocabulary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schmitt, N. (2000). Vocabulary in language teaching. New York: Cambridge University Press. Takač, V. (2008). Vocabulary Learning Strategies and Foreign Language Acquisition. Multilingual Matters.

14

Talaber, J. (2010). The Role of Multimedia in Classroom Teaching. GRIN Verlag. Wilfong, L. (2013). Vocabulary Strategies That Work: Do This--Not That!. Routledge.

15

Appendix A: Lista de precios libros en inglés

16

Appendix B: Interview transcription This interview was designed by the pre-service teachers who are currently doing their final practicum in the Happy School, but it was carried out by one of the members of the team whose mentor teacher is also the head of the English department. 1) En relación a su título de Head of Department en la institución, ¿con qué aptitudes o calificaciones cuenta para estar en aquella posición? En relación a calificaciones yo tengo bueno el titulo de profesora de inglés, titulo de magister para la enseñanza de inglés como idioma extranjero y también he rendido exámenes internacionales de la universidad de Cambridge con calificaciones A y en términos de actitudes... creo que... porque el colegio nos asigna como jefe de departamento y tiene que ver con que el hecho de ser una persona que lleve hartos años, que sea responsable y tener una capacidad de liderar a un grupo de profesores del departamento que se caracteriza por ser comprometido y responsable. 2) ¿Está de acuerdo con el sistema de división por niveles de la asignatura de inglés? Sí, nosotros compartimos este trabajo el año 2004 y anteriormente trabajamos en forma tradicional como cursos y ahí se veía la realidad que probablemente muchos profesores en las que hay alumnos que tienen distintas habilidades y que

uno tenía que optar por que grupo atender

mayoritariamente... a aquellos que les gustaba mucho el inglés, que no les gustaba o que pasaba en ese momento para aquellos que tenían muchas habilidades como ir potenciandolas y también teníamos un grupo que era trabajador, que tenía ciertas habilidades no al mismo nivel que un alumno que podía hablar o expresarse por escrito en inglés. Entonces, a partir del año 2004 comenzamos a trabajar por niveles y esto ha generado también un desarrollo mayor en las habilidades de los distintos alumnos. También un nivel de mayor seguridad por ejemplo para 17

aquellos

alumnos que trabajan en el nivel inicial que se sientan que están con personas que

comparten características de ritmo trabajo y habilidades. Así que si estoy de acuerdo. 3) ¿Cuál es el sistema usado para seleccionar a los estudiantes en los distintos niveles de competencia? ¿Cómo se crea? Hasta hace algunos años usábamos un Placement Test de Cambridge, y luego conociendo la realidad de los grupos con los que trabajamos, porque el 95% de los profesores son profesores antiguos en este colegio… nosotros diseñamos la prueba de acuerdo a las características de los niveles en sí. Entonces, hay en cada evaluación, hay un componente de writing, un componente que tiene que ver con gramática, que tiene que ver con comprensión lectora y después también hay una entrevista oral, y en base a eso se van ubicando los niveles: iniciales, intermedios o avanzados. 4) En este establecimiento, ¿qué diferencia a un estudiante de un nivel beginner de un intermediate, y al mismo tiempo, de un advanced? Entiéndase esta diferencia en términos de perfil de estudiante y/o a sus características. El nivel beginner es lo que uno encontraría en un colegio tradicional, es un nivel colegio, en el que los alumnos tienen algunas dificultades… a lo mejor con el idioma, tanto para… sobre todo en, o sea las habilidades productivas son las que más les cuesta, y las habilidades receptivas tienen más facilidad en los que es la parte de reading más que el listening. El alumno que está en un nivel intermedio comprende más y de mejor manera lo que son… por ejemplo el hecho de que el profesor hable, cualquier tipo de recordings que ellos escuchen de distintos tipos de hablantes. También al leer, tienen mayor dominio, no es cierto? de los textos, de vocabulario, y también empiezan ellos a usar el inglés en forma oral, y un poco más complejo las habilidades de producción escrita. Y un alumno que está en un nivel avanzado es un alumno que se le hace las clases solamente en inglés,

18

y es capaz también de desenvolverse en inglés en todas las habilidades. Eso sería principalmente las diferencias. Hemos compartido nuestras experiencias entre compañeros y claro, los chicos de advanced son los “gifted ones” en un sentido de que podemos comunicarnos y darnos a entender y ellos también al mismo tiempo… Pero también un intermedio … por ejemplo, esto es más personal pero años atrás yo tomé un intermedio en séptimo básico y nunca les hablé en inglés (en vdd se refiere a español por lo que entiendo) y ellos eran capaces también de conversar conmigo en inglés pero no al mismo nivel, no con la misma fluidez, no con la misma riqueza de vocabulario que un avanzado. Entonces, yo creo que por eso ellos están en un nivel intermedio, porque si intentan más podríamos decir que “el que más trabaja” intentando alcanzar un dominio del inglés es el alumno que está en el intermedio 5) ¿Existe algún mecanismo de progreso de estudiantes en caso de que muestren condiciones de ser promovidos de un nivel a otro superior? ¿Cómo es? Si, por ejemplo nosotros semestralmente hacemos cambios basados en su desempeño. No solamente basados en sus notas, porque las notas pueden obedecer a distintas situaciones. Nosotros podemos tener un alumno en avanzado que sabe hablar inglés pero que no se preocupa de que tiene notas deficientes pero si tiene la habilidades para estar en un nivel avanzado, por lo tanto, no se va a cambiar y tenemos alumnos que van manejando como decía yo al principio con mayor seguridad su idioma y son promovidos a los niveles siguientes. Cuando vemos que hay algún caso que merezca hacer el cambio el forma inmediata también lo hemos hecho, ahora justamente nos pasó que hubo un alumno… al parecer era muy tímido cuando recién llegó entonces cuando fue entrevistado y contestó estaba muy nervioso, pero a partir de dos semanas, tres semanas de clases,

19

nos dimos cuenta de que en realidad podía rendir según las características del nivel avanzado que estaba en ese grupo, en ese nivel digamos y se cambió, no íbamos a esperar hasta el fin del semestre Claro, tenía que ver quizás con otros temas de ansiedad … Claro, exacto. 6) Según algunos estudiantes, y esto viene del testimonio de mis compañeros de práctica, no hay garantías de que al pertenecer a un grupo beginner ó intermediate, uno pueda ser promovido a otro nivel, dicho de otro modo, ellos están predeterminados a permanecer desde 4to básico hasta 4to medio. ¿Está consciente usted de aquello? o ¿se ha escuchado algo así antes por parte de los profesores? No, no, porque de hecho aquí también hay historias de alumnos que llegaron un nivel inicial y terminaron en avanzado. Eso también depende de las aptitudes y de las actitudes de los alumnos, porque hay alumnos que tienen potencial pero tienen una actitud de no desarrollar y a veces esas actitudes son incluso promovidas por sus pares. ¿Por qué? porque el trabajar en un nivel indica cierta exigencia y cierta complejidad. Entonces, por ejemplo un alumno que está en intermedio tiene un nivel de exigencia y si ese alumno es cambiado a un nivel avanzado, sabe que ese nivel de exigencia es mayor porque sabe que tiene que rendir de otra forma, entonces muchas veces quieren quedarse en lo que resulta más cómodo, y muchas veces hemos tenido que conversar con apoderados e incluso convencerlos de que más que lo que sea la zona de confort como quien dice y la seguridad respecto de las notas--porque obviamente que se preocupan de sus notas también-hay que promover el tema del desarrollo de las habilidades. Y a veces nos cuesta, muchas veces tenemos que entrevistarnos con apoderados que nos piden que cambiemos a alguien de nivel, por ejemplo de un avanzado a un intermedio, o de un intermedio a un inicial, claro, el apoderado no lo

20

dice abiertamente pero los alumnos si, es que es más fácil, claro, porque si yo tengo las habilidades para trabajar en cierto nivel y ser exigido en cierto nivel, debo hacerlo ahí, o si no estoy fomentando algo que... Pero sí existe la posibilidad. Ahora, hay de todo, hay niños a los que no les gusta la sensación de cambiarse y hay otros que sí les gusta el desafío, pero como yo decía al principio, aquí hemos tenido historias de niños que han llegado al colegio a un nivel inicial y han terminado en avanzado. Depende estrictamente de la.. de los dos factores actitud más que nada, yo creo, sobre aptitud, quizás un chico que intenta, que estudia, aunque le cueste, aunque no tenga la aptitud, si quiere ser promovido, quizás... Claro, por ejemplo como el niño que vino la otra vez. él quería ya no continuar en inicial, y él quería avanzar. A veces nos enfrentamos con el tema de los textos también, que hay una pregunta que ví que se relacionaba con el texto, y si está dentro de nuestras posibilidades, también nosotros vemos cómo podemos ayudar a que tenga un texto diferente. 7) Esto viene de situaciones que tenemos, que estamos unos en beginner, otros intermediate, otros en advanced. ¿Por qué, por ejemplo, en un nivel beginner a un intermedio, de 7mo a 6to usan el mismo material y cubren mismos contenidos? Porque el énfasis que nosotros decidimos dar al tomar un libro, un material que sea igual, es que hay más movilidad entre un inicial y un intermedio y el trabajo se da más en la parte oral y hay más exigencia y más actividades con un intermedio en la medida de lo posible según las

21

características que ellos tienen. Entonces, los contenidos que se van a cubrir son los mismos, y lo que se empieza a tratar de desarrollar de forma más fuerte, es la parte oral y la producción escrita. Y como yo decía, hay más movilidad entre intermedio e inicial, por lo tanto no sería un problema el tema del texto. O sea, hay muchas cosas más, que van más allá de lo que es el texto con el que se trabaja y en el caso de un intermedio, por ejemplo, ellos en el año leen dos novelas, y el inicial lee una; antes no leían pero hace como cuatro años ya, empezamos a ver que nuestros alumnos de inicial también iban adquiriendo las habilidades que nosotros esperábamos y desarrollando con mayor fuerza lo que era por ejemplo la habilidad de reading, entonces nos atrevimos a poner también una novela para ellos, pero en el segundo semestre, porque ya está más afianzado el trabajo que se ha hecho y se lee como en Octubre. Sin embargo, el intermedio lee una en el primer semestre y otra en el segundo, entonces no es solamente el texto con el trabajan sino que también hay otro material y otras actividades que también se van realizando. 8) ¿Quién escoge los materiales usados en la clase (Oxford’s textbooks)? ¿En base a qué parámetros? Nosotros recibimos propuestas, por ser un colegio grande, hay muchas empresas que quieren trabajar con nosotros. Pero nosotros como colegio buscamos a quien ofrezca el mejor material, en términos de calidad, tecnología, se podría decir, porque hasta hace algunos años usábamos un texto que era muy bueno, pero en términos de tecnología se quedó atrás, y por el tema de los ITools que es una herramienta muy atractiva para trabajar con los alumnos; ellos no avanzaron en ese aspecto. Y también algo para considerar es que nosotros cuando elegimos un texto, también nos fijamos en el precio, porque nuestro colegio es un colegio grande, pero hay mucha gente que no tiene un nivel socioeconómico muy alto, entonces tenemos que pensar también en el costo que tiene un libro y hay gente que con muchos sacrificio compra el libro para sus hijos, entonces tenemos que buscar 22

algo que cumpla las 3B. Pero, en general, las propuestas que nos hacen son similares; el texto de una editorial y de otra, tienen características similares.

23

Appendix C: Students’ distribution in school houses

24

Appendix D: Survey results

25

26

27

28

29

Appendix E: Vocabulary size test scores

30

Action Plan In this report, I will present a brief contextualisation of the school and the class. Then, a description of the data collection instruments that were used to identify the problem. Next, I will present a literature review that will help the reader understand the value of the strategy chosen for this intervention. After that, I will refer to the stages that are contemplated in the intervention with a description of the instruments that will be used to assess the process. Finally, I present a Gantt chart to illustrate the different stages and how they are distributed throughout the time of the intervention.

The problem The Happy school is a semi-private educational institution in which English is perceived as an important goal. Some subjects, including English, have the students divided into three different levels (beginner, intermediate, and advanced) to facilitate the teaching-learning process. This measure has allowed teachers to adapt their teaching methodology to the group they are teaching in a more precise manner; similarly, it has allowed students to share with peers who are going through similar stages in their learning process. In spite of the important role that English plays in the school’s curriculum, the beginner levels still have important difficulties to learn the language. The 10th-grade class I am currently teaching is a beginner class of 34 students, whose insufficient vocabulary knowledge appears to be a major difficulty for the efficient performance of language learning activities. The first indication that this was hindering the students’ work was the constant request for translations and explanations of words that I could notice during my observation week. After that,

31

in order to ensure that this issue needed to be improved, I utilised data gathered through different instruments. Firstly, I had access to an interview in which the head of the English department described some characteristics of the students in the beginner levels. She pointed out that at this level, students have difficulties with the language, especially with productive skills. Also that this level is quite similar to a typical class in other schools in which English is not viewed as fundamental. Secondly, I carried out a survey to find out about the students’ actions regarding vocabulary learning. This survey shows, among other things, that most of the students try to use the context to understand unknown words. Yet, without explicit instruction of this strategy we cannot be sure that the students are effectively deriving the meaning of words from context. The third instrument used was a test designed by Nation and Beglar (2007) to measure receptive vocabulary size. This test, showed that the students know around 3400 word families. This vocabulary size, according to Nation’s standards (Nation, 2006), would not be enough to understand children’s movies, which is the simplest genre mentioned the author in this respect.

Literature review Although directly teaching vocabulary may be a tempting alternative, I have opted for teaching a strategy that can allow the students to figure out the meaning of unknown words by themselves. In that respect, Antonacci, O’Callaghan, & Berkowits (2014) refer to the formation of independent learners as “one of the primary goals of schooling,” which is closely related to the importance of teaching strategies as opposed to merely words.

32

More specifically, I have decided to focus on the strategy of Contextual Redefinition because of its relevance for this particular group of students. As it has been mentioned before, the students already use context, to a certain extent, to understand unknown words, so this strategy could potentiate a skill they have already developed. Brassell (2010) is one of the authors who recommends using this strategy. She suggests instructing the students to use both the information available in context and within the word in question (root words, prefixes, and suffixes) to make more informed guesses about the meaning. Similarly, Antonacci, O’Callaghan, & Berkowits (2014) suggest to teach students how to use the clues provided in the word, in the sentence, and in surrounding sentences to infer the meaning of an unknown word. Asri (2013) refers to contextual redefinition not only as a means to predict the meaning of a new words, but also to verify it. He adds that the strategy helps students link the new word to their prior knowledge, which can be very valuable if we want to make learning more meaningful. Nevertheless, Antonacci, O’Callaghan, & Berkowits (2014) warn that merely using the context may not be sufficient to achieve proper understanding of a new word. For that reason, they suggest using other tools (like dictionaries or glossaries) for the students to verify their guesses. Several authors, like Banda and Mena (2016) and Antonacci, O’Callaghan, & Berkowits (2014), refer to Tierney and Readence’s (2005) approach to the use of contextual clues. Basically, this approach consists in 5 steps: “(1) select unfamiliar words, (2) write a sentence, (3) present the isolated words, 4) present the words in context, and (5) use a dictionary for verification.”

33

The intervention It is expected that at the end of the intervention, students will be able to use the strategy of contextual redefinition to infer the meaning of unknown words in a short story. In order to do that, the students will first have to be able to identify basic parts of speech in a short story. For that reason, the first week of the intervention will be devoted to teaching the most basic parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs). One of the main threats to this part of the intervention is how abstract the concepts can be. That is why, if necessary, I will use Spanish to help the students make connections with their prior knowledge and facilitate their understanding of the topic. Next, the students will have to be able to analyse the morphology of unknown words to infer their meaning. So the second week will be devoted to teaching some basics on morphological analysis, although I will only focus on root words and affixes due to time constraints. In order to practise both parts of speech and morphological analysis, the students will do word sorts since, as suggested by Brassell (2009), this type of activity can help students understand “the relationships among words” (p.2). Also, as many authors suggest using tools to verify the meaning of words at the end of a contextual redefinition exercise, the students will have to be able to use a bilingual dictionary to verify the meaning of words inferred through contextual clues. Consequently, part of the third week will be used to teach how to use a bilingual dictionary to verify guesses. An opportunity that I can perceive in this respect is that there are plenty of dictionaries available in the classroom and that students are already used to using them. For that reason instruction in this part will be kept to a minimum and I will mostly concentrate on eliciting knowledge from the students. 34

Finally, during the fourth week, the students will learn about some types of contextual clues: definition/explanation,

synonym/restatement,

antonym/contrast,

inference/general,

and

punctuation context (Frey and Fisher, 2009).

The assessment In order to assess the success of the intervention, a pre and post test will be conducted. In these tests, the students will have to fill in a chart with information about words previously selected by the teacher. There will be three stages to each test: (1) the students look at the words selected out of context and fill in the chart with their guesses. (2) the students read a short story and fill in the chart with their new guesses based on contextual clues. (3) the students check their guesses using a bilingual dictionary and fill in a new chart to compare the information. After the pre and post tests, a short survey will be conducted to see how the students’ perception of their performance changes. Using a likert scale, the students will provide information about how accurate they think their guesses were in each stage, and how confident they feel using this strategy. During the intervention, samples of students’ work will be collected weekly to observe their progress in the different stages. Essentially, these will be the exercises that the students do to practise parts of speech, morphological analysis, using the dictionary, and using contextual clues.

35

I.

Gantt Chart

16/5/17

22/5/17

23/5/17

29/5/17

30/5/17

6/6/17

12/6/17

13/6/17

19/6/17

Pre-test

Parts of speech

Morphological analysis

Dictionary

Contextual clues

Post test

36

References Antonacci, P., O'Callaghan, C., & Berkowitz, E. (2014). Developing Content Area Literacy: 40 Strategies for Middle and Secondary Classrooms. SAGE Publications. Asri, N. (2013). The analysis of two pre reading strategies: Contextual redefinition and word list in EFL learners’ reading comprehension. Journal of English and Education, 1(2), 47-56. Retrieved from http://ejournal.upi.edu/index.php/L-E/article/view/583 Banda, D. & Mena, A. (2016). Vocabulary development through incidental and intentional learning techniques (Thesis, Cotopaxi Technical University, Latacunga, Ecuador). Retrieved from http://181.112.224.103/bitstream/27000/3081/1/T-UTC-4018.pdf Brassell, D. (2010). Dare to Differentiate: Vocabulary Strategies for All Students. New York: Guilford Press Brassell, D. (2009). Dare to differentiate: Vocabulary strategies for all students. New England Reading Association Journal, 44(2), 1-6. Frey, N., & Fisher, D. (2009). Learning words inside & out: Vocabulary instruction that boosts achievement in all subject areas. Heinemann. Nation, I.S.P. and Beglar, D. (2007) A vocabulary size test. The Language Teacher, 31(7), 9-13. Nation, I. S. P., (2006). How large a vocabulary is needed for reading and listening?. Canadian Modern Language Review, 63(1), 59-82. Tierney, T. J., & Readence, J. E. (2005). Reading strategies and practices: A compendium. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

37

Reflection of the pedagogical intervention Vocabulary is an aspect considered “crucial to the development of language performance overall” (Milton, 2013, p. 58). For that reason, an intervention was designed to improve the vocabulary knowledge of a beginner 10th grade class in 7 20-minute lessons. The main objective of the intervention was being able to use the strategy of contextual redefinition to infer the meaning of unknown words in a short story. In order to achieve this objective, the students would be instructed on basic notions of parts of speech, word formation, contextual clues, and dictionary use.

Modifications to the action plan The first modification that had to be done was related to the presentation of the contents to be taught. The first session was devoted to teaching basic notions of parts of speech through a PowerPoint presentation. The students were expected to take quick notes and ask questions as I was teaching but this was not the case. In fact, most students took a long time writing in their notebooks because they were writing everything I was showing them. In order to use the little time we had more efficiently, from the next session onwards, I decided to present the content both with a PowerPoint presentation and with a handout, so that the students did not feel the need to write all the new information but rather make brief notes as needed. This modification had a considerable impact on the following sessions because, as McLeod, Fisher, and Hoover (2003) point out, handouts are “helpful time-savers” (p.144). In that sense, they did not only help with time management during the presentation sessions but also during the exercises sessions because they provided the students with something to refer to (McLeod et al. 2003).

38

The second modification had to do with the overall structure of the intervention in light of the shortage of time. Because I could not teach one of the lessons (the one that would have been devoted to the use of dictionaries), and because of the school’s demands in terms of summative assessment, the intervention had to be slightly reduced. The dictionary session was omitted because the students did not need as much instruction on this area as in the other ones. For instance, there are plenty of dictionaries in the classroom that the students can simply pick up if they need one. For that reason, looking up words in a bilingual dictionary is a skill they have been able to develop with time and without explicit instruction. Also, originally there would be two sessions devoted to contextual clues, one for presentation and one for exercises. Due to time constraints, the presentation and the exercises had to be done briefly in just one lesson, so that the post test could be done one week earlier. This modification is probably the one that had the biggest negative impact. The students might have benefited from a more gradual introduction to the contextual clues, so that they had time to make connections with their prior knowledge in Spanish. Some studies have demonstrated that teaching too much in too little time can "overtax students' resources and thus lead to inefficient teaching" (Smith & Rothkopf, 1984, p.342). This means that the reduced time available for this part of the intervention might have caused students store the information in the short term memory, but not necessarily in their long term memory.

Results There were different data collection instruments used before, during, and after the intervention. A pre and post-test were designed in which the students had to guess the meaning of words out of context, then read a short story to make a more informed guess, and classify the words according 39

to parts of speech. Then, a survey was applied--also before and after the intervention--to find out about the students’ perception of their own abilities to guess meaning from context. Finally, during the intervention, samples of students’ work, regarding parts of speech and affixes, were collected.

The pre and post-test The results of the pre-test show that, on average, the students were able to complete 18% of the test, and got 13% of the test correct (see Appendix A for more details). There are several reasons that could explain these results. For instance, perhaps the students were not interested in participating, were tired, or had a negative attitude towards the test. However, it could also be explained by the students’ unfamiliarity with the aspects being assessed. For instance, one fourth of the test was about parts of speech, and most of the students did not know how to answer even after I wrote some examples (verb, noun, adjective, and adverb) on the board. Now, if we compare these results with the ones obtained in the post-test, we can see that after the intervention the students were able to do much more. On average, the students were able to complete 56.9% of the post-test, and got 45.4% of it correct. Certainly, this does not prove that the students are now able to use contextual clues to perfection, but what can be ascertained is that they are better equipped to make informed guesses about the meaning of unknown words. To support this claim, I would like to refer to some examples of the students’ answers in the posttest. One of the words they had to define was “utterly,” and I have chosen it as an example because it is the one that caused the most interesting answers. Before they read the text, some of the students guesses for the meaning of utterly were “temor,” “utensilio,” “un poco,” “inútil,” and “tomar.” After reading the word in context (“she is totally, completely, and utterly terrified…” Gaiman, 2006) most of the students wrote “absolutamente,” “absoluto,” “completamente,” “terriblemente,” 40

and “sentimiento de completo terror.” This alone shows a considerable difference between what they thought when they read the word isolated versus what they thought after reading it in context, but what is more interesting is that in the last column of the table (“How do you know”) they wrote things like “la encontré como sinónimo,” “por la palabra ‘completed’,” “modifica el verbo,” and “porque termina en ‘ly’ que significa ‘mente’.” Similarly, although less common, there was a student who identified the meaning and part of speech of the word “shivers” (“When she sees a spider, she shivers all over…” Gaiman, 2006) through a similar method. Before reading the word in context, he wrote “grito” whereas after reading it in context he, and several other students, wrote “escalofríos.” Unlike other students who thought it was a noun, this student wrote “verb” in the “Part of Speech” column, and in the “How do you know” column he wrote “porque nombró a ‘she’ como sujeto del verbo.” The fact that some students thought it was a noun can be explained by the connection they made to the equivalent word in Spanish, but this student was able to go further and consider the clues in the context in order to understand the real meaning.

The survey The results of the survey applied before and after the intervention (see Appendix B) show that the students’ confidence about their general ability to understand new words in their context considerably improved. After the post-test, 51.6% of the students marked either agree or strongly agree, versus only 21.8% after the pre test. Regarding their ability to identify parts of speech, the numbers went from 12.5% to 64.5% agree or strongly agree. Similarly, 21.8% of the students initially marked agree or strongly agree when asked about their understanding of the ways in which prefixes and suffixes modify words, which increased to 45.1% after the post-test. Finally, the last 41

question regarding contextual clues was slightly different because before the intervention, the students were already quite confident (46.8% agree or strongly agree) so the increase was less dramatic (64.5% agree or strongly agree after the intervention).

The word sorts During the intervention, the students were asked to do word sorts (Brassell, 2009) to check their understanding of the content being taught. The first word sort was about parts of speech; essentially, the students were presented with an extract from the novella Coraline by Neil Gaiman and had to identify as many verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs as they could in 10 minutes. The results of this activity (see Appendix C) show that on average the students were able to classify 17 words correctly. The second word sort was about prefixed and suffixed words. The students were given a new extract from Neil Gaiman’s novella and had to find as many prefixed and suffixed words as they could in 10 minutes. The results of this activity are quite interesting because they show that, on average, the students identified 12 prefixed or suffixed words in the time given. Naturally, not all of those words were correctly chosen, in fact they identified correctly 10 words on average. Nevertheless, all the mistakes made can be considered overgeneralisations (for instance doorway, cupboard, grandmother, hot-water) in which the students mistook a prefixed or suffixed word as a compound word. Regarding overgeneralisation, Mahrooqi, Thakur, and Roscoe (2015) refer to it as an intralingual error, which, according to Richards (2015) has to do with “exposure to the target language” and consequently could be considered a proof that the student is learning.

42

Discussion In studies conducted to measure the impact of contextual redefinition on reading comprehension, authors like Asri (2013) found that since this strategy posed a challenge for the students, they could "retain the vocabulary longer." Unfortunately, this is not something I am able to measure in my context, but I did notice that the fact that it represented a challenge also engaged the students in the task, similar to what Asri (2013) suggests. Regarding the first specific objective (being able to identify basic parts of speech), we could say that the objective was met, since, in 10 minutes, the students were able to correctly sort 17 words on average. This, compared to the results of the pre-test in which only a couple of students could correctly classify 1-2 words by their part of speech, shows considerable progress. Regarding the second specific objective (being able to analyse the morphology of words), the results may seem less evident that in the case mentioned above. The students could correctly identify only 10 prefixed or suffixed words in 10 minutes. Still, as it has been mentioned before, there were several mistakes that show that the students understood the way in which prefixes and suffixes modify words. Something that could have been done to prevent this overgeneralisation, would have been to point out more explicitly that prefixes and suffixes do not convey meaning by themselves; that way, the students may have noticed that, even though the word “hot” modifies the meaning of “water” (as in hot-water), both words do have a meaning if they are isolated. They could have understood that this does not happen with words like “unexpected,” in which case “expected” does have a meaning but “un” does not. As for the general objective (being able to use the strategy of contextual redefinition to infer the meaning of unknown words in a short story), the data shows that there was a considerable 43

improvement after the intervention. The students were able to use the procedure proposed by the teacher to make more accurate guesses about the meaning of new words in their context. The results of this action research project are consistent with those of Fitriyani (2014), who found that the strategy of contextual redefinition improves “students’ vocabulary mastery” (p.59). Still, further research should be undertaken to investigate the long term effects of contextual redefinition in the vocabulary knowledge of ELL students. Most of the research done so far using this strategy focuses on reading comprehension, and on vocabulary only as a secondary aspect. In that sense, I definitely support Banda and Mena’s (2016) suggestion that more contributions are needed to better understand "incidental and intentional techniques" of vocabulary learning.

Reflection In spite of the improvement the data suggests, there were some aspects of the intervention that could have been better addressed. The first one is time management since, as it has been mentioned above, the action plan had to be reduced and the section related to dictionary use could not be carried out at all. In that sense, I also think that perhaps the action plan was rather ambitious in terms of content selection. What could be done to improve this, if the plan was executed again, is either allot more time to the whole intervention, or reduce areas to be tackled. In other words, I would choose to leave out either the dictionary lesson or the word formation lesson so that the time available could be used for more thorough instruction and practice instances. Furthermore, I think that the fact that there was not much time for the whole intervention meant that the content had to be covered too quickly and that the students did not get enough practice. Had it been different, the students would have had more time to consolidate their knowledge and I

44

could be more certain of this intervention’s impact on long-term gains in vocabulary-building strategies. Finally, another thing that could have been handled differently is classroom management. Unfortunately, I did not have the class’ full attention at all times, so the students did not benefit equally from the intervention. Moreover, the students who participated actively, answering and asking questions, were most of the time the same ones. This caused some other students to lose interest in participating and I was not always able to control the situation effectively. If I could do this intervention again, I would make sure to include plenty of group work. That way, those students who were more reluctant to participate could have a chance to do so in a more relaxed environment. To conclude, after analysing the data collected through several instruments, I can say that the objectives of the action plan were or met to a satisfactory level. The students did improve their ability to guess the meaning of unknown words from their context, and also their perception of their ability improved. Nevertheless, there are some aspects that could have been better implemented to make the experience even more meaningful for the class and for the individual students. Time management and classroom management seem to have been the main issues that could have been better handled during the intervention, and this knowledge encourages me to improve as a teacher to provide my students with more meaningful and effective learning opportunities.

45

References Asri, N. (2013). The analysis of two pre-reading strategies: Contextual redefinition and words list in EFL learners’ reading comprehension. Journal of English and Education, 1(2), 47-56. Retrieved from http://ejournal.upi.edu/index.php/L-E/article/view/583 Banda, D. & Mena, A. (2016). Vocabulary development through incidental and intentional learning techniques (Thesis, Cotopaxi Technical University, Latacunga, Ecuador). Retrieved from http://181.112.224.103/bitstream/27000/3081/1/T-UTC-4018.pdf Brassell, D. (2009). Dare to differentiate: Vocabulary strategies for all students. New England Reading Association Journal, 44(2), 1-6. Fitriyani, N. (2014). Using contextual redefinition strategy to improve students’ vocabulary mastery at grade VII A of SMP Negeri 1 Giri Mulya. Undergraduated thesis, Universitas Bengkulu. Gaiman, N., & McKean, D. (2006). Coraline. New York: Harper Perennial. Mahrooqi, R., Thakur, V. S., & Roscoe, A. A. (2015). Methodologies for effective writing instruction in EFL and ESL classrooms. Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference, an imprint of IGI Global. McLeod, J., Fisher, J., & Hoover, G. (2003). The key elements of classroom management managing time and space, student behavior, and instructional strategies. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Milton, J. (2013). Measuring the contribution of vocabulary knowledge to proficiency in the four skills. In C. Bardel, C. Lindqvist, & B. Laufer (Eds.), L2 vocabulary acquisition, knowledge and

46

use: New perspectives on assessment and corpus analysis (pp. 57-78) (Eurosla Monographs Series, 2). European Second Language Association. Richards, Jack C., ed. Error Analysis: Perspectives on Second Language Acquisition. New York: Routledge, 2015. Smith, S. M., & Rothkopf, E. Z. (1984). Contextual enrichment and distribution of practice in the classroom. Cognition and Instruction, 1(3), 341-358.

47

Appendix A: Pre and post-test results

48

49

Appendix B: Survey results

50

51

52

53

Appendix C: Word sorts

54

55

Using the contextual redefinition strategy to improve ... - PUCV Inglés

students, and then the way in which the English subject is addressed in the school. .... observe those characteristics in the 10th graders I am teaching when I wanted to introduce a simple ..... Next, the students will have to be able to analyse the morphology of ... http://181.112.224.103/bitstream/27000/3081/1/T-UTC-4018.pdf.

1MB Sizes 1 Downloads 126 Views

Recommend Documents

Using the contextual redefinition strategy to improve ... - PUCV Inglés
The whole class sat the test and the score average was 34 (see Appendix E: Vocabulary Size Test. Scores), which ..... Retrieved from http://ejournal.upi.edu/index.php/L-E/article/view/583 ... http://181.112.224.103/bitstream/27000/3081/1/T-UTC-4018.p

Using Meta-Reasoning to Improve the Performance of ...
CCL, Cognitive Computing Lab. Georgia Institute of ..... Once a game finishes, an abstracted trace is created from the execution trace that Darmok generates.

Using The Simpsons to Improve Economic Instruction ...
students the opportunity to practice the economic analysis of public policy issues. Empirical research on the .... prohibition seen in Springfield and the narcotics market in the United States are clear. Showing this ..... While we did not collect co

Fighting back: Using observability tools to improve the ...
Using observability tools to improve the DBMS (not just ... For concreteness, we'll discuss a specific tool. (DTrace) and ... Sample-based profiling. (OS service).

Using Machine Learning to Improve the Email ... - Research at Google
Using Machine Learning to Improve the Email Experience ... services including email, and machine learning has come of ... Smart Reply: Automated response.

Using Meta-Reasoning to Improve the Performance of Case-Based ...
formance over a period of time. Fox and Leake [8] developed a system to improve the retrieval of a CBR system using meta-reasoning. Their work used a model.

Online Vocabulary Adaptation Using Contextual ...
PENSIEVE takes a social ... Finally Section 5 ... expand the vocabulary [4, 5] or to statically adapt the ... technologies, social network analysis, and document.

Online Vocabulary Adaptation Using Contextual ...
transcription task of spoken annotations of business cards ... vocabulary for a given business card. .... 335M words from the following data sources: 1996 CSR.

Using Task Load Tracking to Improve Kernel Scheduler Load ...
Using Task Load Tracking to Improve Kernel Scheduler Load Balancing.pdf. Using Task Load Tracking to Improve Kernel Scheduler Load Balancing.pdf. Open.

Using Data to Improve Student Achievement
Aug 3, 2008 - Data are psychometrically sound, such as reliable, valid predictors of future student achievement, and are an accurate measure of change over time. • Data are aligned with valued academic outcomes, like grade-level out- come standards

Using targeted feedback surveys to inform and improve ...
Many Koreans are unused to CLT as the Korean education system promotes rote learning, memorisation .... Asian EFL Journal 4 (2), [Online]. Available from: ...

Using Argument Mapping to Improve Critical ... - Semantic Scholar
Feb 4, 2015 - The centrality of critical thinking (CT) as a goal of higher education is uncon- troversial. In a recent high-profile book, ... dents college education appears to be failing completely in this regard: “With a large sample of more than

Using Relaxations to Improve Search in Distributed ...
Computer Science, University College Cork, Ireland. Abstract. Densely ..... Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems 3(2) (2000) 185–207. 4. Modi, P., Shen ...

How Windows is using hardware to improve security - BlueHat IL
Terminate process if invalid target. Indirect. Call. Kernel Control Flow Guard improves protection against control flow hijacking for kernel code. Paired with HVCI to ensure both code integrity and control flow integrity. OSR REDTEAM targeted kCFG bi

Using a Sensitivity Measure to Improve Training ...
Engineering, Hohai University, Nanjing 210098, China (email: [email protected]). In our study, a new learning algorithm based on the MRII algorithm is developed. We introduce a sensitivity of. Adalines, which is defined as the probability of an Adalin

Using Search-Logs to Improve Query Tagging - Slav Petrov
Jul 8, 2012 - matching the URL domain name is usually a proper noun. ..... Linguistics, pages 497–504, Sydney, Australia, July. Association for ...